H. Martin 
 
 The Westirlnster Doctrine 
 
 of the 
 Inspiration of Scripture 
 
 III! 
 
 BX 
 
 9084 
 .M3 
 1890 
 
[ Si- i- ::3 ii)60 
 
 BX 9084 .M3 1890 
 Martin, Hugh, 1822-1885. 
 The Westminster doctrine of 
 the inspiration of 
 
■-XiC.n-i.C Warfield Library 
 
 #.N OF mUfj^ 
 
 J 
 
 THE (( DEC19 1S25 '^ 
 
 Westminster DoCtfrne 
 
 Inspiration of Scripture 
 
 (WITH A PREFATORY NOTE ON THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGE 
 
 COMMITTEE'S REPORT, AND WITH REMARKS ON 
 
 DR MARCUS DODS'S RECENT SERMON.) 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 H UGH MARTIN, D. D. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: J. NISBET & CO. 
 1890. 
 
 PRICE THREEPENCE. 
 
u 
 
A 
 
 f DEC 19ib2o 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 ON THK 
 
 COLLEGE COMMITTEE'S REPORT 
 
 Says the Westminster Confession : — " It pleased the Lord to commit the 
 same [I.e., His revelation of Himself and His declaration of His will], 
 Avliolly unto writing." The Lord Himself committed them to writing. 
 
 Says the College Committee : * — " The revelation of God and the 
 declaration of His wiU are committed wholly to writing." They are com- 
 mitted to writing. That's all. The College Committee says not by whom. 
 
 It thus appears that while the Westminster Confession, in its first section, 
 and indeed in its first sentence, affirms the doctrine of the divine authorship 
 of Holy Scripture, the Free Church College Committee so quotes from that 
 section and from that part of it, as to avoid affirming that doctrine. 
 
 I shall not speak of this in the language of blame, because the Committee 
 may have a satisfactory explanation to give. But failing that, I am persuaded 
 they owe the Church a serious and ample apology. 
 
 Satisfactory explanation is not by any means to be found in the fact 
 that they go on to quote the second section of the Confession. For, in the 
 first place, that second section is devoted to the affirmation, not of any 
 doctrine of inspiration, but solely of the doctrine of the Canon. Though the 
 word " inspiration " occurs in it, it pronounces no judgment on what inspira- 
 tion, as a process, was, or may be supposed to have been. It pronounces 
 on the question, — What are the books to which the characteristic of 
 inspiration belongs 1 In the second place, that being the object of the 
 section,- — namely, to affirm the doctrine of the Canon, — it was suitable and 
 sufficient, for the Westminster Divines, in view of what they had said in 
 the first section, to quote now the scriptural phrase, " given by inspiration 
 of God," without e.rpIanation ; which it Avould have been absurd to do had 
 the section been designed to be an avowal or confession of the doctrine of 
 inspiration. In the third place, the Committee cannot justify their omission 
 of the doctrine of the divine authorship of the Scriptures, by pointing to their 
 quotation of the words, * ' the only rule of faith and life," because while this 
 affirms the authority of the Scripti;res, it is impossible to maintain the 
 doctrine of their divine authority except as based on the distinct and prior 
 doctrine of their divine authorship. And, in the fourth place, if they were 
 
 * " Notwithstanding, the Committee are not prepared to say that Professor 
 Smith's views infer a denial on his part, either directly, or constructively, of the 
 doctrine that ' in the books of the Old and New Testaments, the revelation of God 
 and the declaration of His will are committed wholly unto writing,' and that 'they 
 are all given by inspiration of God to be the only rule of faith and life.' The Com- 
 mittee lay stress on this, because the doctrine now referred to is not only the technical 
 ground in the Confession which must regidate ecclesiastical procedure, but is really 
 the essential and fundamental truth which it is vital to maintain." 
 
2 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 to make so serious an omission from, and misquotation of, the first section, 
 designing to make reparation when quoting from the second, it is singularly 
 strange and vexing that they have missed their opportunity, by abstaining 
 from quoting the striking and very decided expression — " Holy Scripture, 
 or the Word of God written." 
 
 The matter becomes the more serious, and such that it cannot be passed 
 over in silence, when the Committee go on to say, that " the doctrine now 
 referred to is not only the technical ground in the Confession which must 
 regulate ecclesiastical procedure, but is really the essential and fundamental 
 truth which it is vital to maintain." For who, in his senses, will say that 
 it is " vital to maintain " that divine revelations have been committed to 
 writing — not saying by ichom ? Or, Avho that knows the meaning and ends 
 of a Confession of Faith will count it " vital " to be allowed to have the use 
 of a scriptural phrase such as " given by inspiration " 1 Or, who that knows 
 a tenth part of what has been written about the nature, meaning and effects 
 of inspiration, "would peril the simple and sublime truth of the divine author- 
 ship of Holy Scripture on a single vocable, such as "inspiration'"? And, 
 again, how can you expect intelligent men to yield to the claim of divine 
 authority for these writings, if you have failed to vindicate the claim of 
 divine authorship ? And, finally, who that reads the first section of the 
 Westminster Confession, will tolerate that the College Committee should 
 aver that they have set forth "the technical ground in the Confession which 
 must regulate ecclesiastical procedure," when, on the contrary, they have 
 given the most striking recent illustration of the adage about the play of 
 Hamlet and the part thereof 1 No, verily. Ecclesiastical procedure, when 
 necessary, must be regulated by the putting of the question : " Do you — yea 
 or nay — believe that the Old and New Testaments are the Tevelation of God 
 and His declaration of His will committed wholly to writing by Himself 1 
 You avowed your belief of that, when you signed the Westminster Confes- 
 sion. Do you, or do you not, believe it still 1 " 
 
 The fact is that against the representation given by the College Coni- 
 inittee, Coleridge would have been under no provocation to winte his " Con- 
 fessions of an inquiring spirit." Against the Westminster doctrine (no doubt 
 under a misapprehension of it connected with tlie ridiculous idea of "dicta- 
 tion,") he poured out, in that well known little volume, one of the fiercest 
 tirades in the history of theological literature. 
 
 I will not affirm, far less insinuate, that, in the point on hand, the 
 College Committee have failed in their duty wittiiigjij. But in their duty 
 they have failed — failed seriously. And I trust that in the coming General 
 Assembly they will be able to explain, or failing that, to apologise to the 
 Church for the grievous injustice they have done to the very first of her con- 
 fessional truths — the doctrine which alone bears up her great duty of 
 confessing, and bears her out in every separate doctrine she confesses. 
 
 H. M. 
 
 Montrose, April 1877. 
 
THE 
 
 "WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 INSPIRATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 I HAVE tliouglit that, without mingling much in the exciting debates 
 of the passing hour, I might do an acceptable service to humble 
 Christian souls, by pointing out and fastening attention upon the 
 deliverance which the Westminster Confession gives on the doctrine 
 of the Inspiration of Scripture, and which, in its wisdom, simplicity, 
 grandeur, and easily demonstrable verity, has satisfied the Church for 
 centuries, and will doubtless continue to express her convictions till 
 the Lord shall come again. 
 
 There is something singularly quiet, and dignified, and satisfactory 
 in the form in which the Westminster divines have put this great 
 truth. Affirming the validity of natural religion, yet its insufficiency 
 to give that knowledge of God and of His will which is necessary to 
 salvation, and that in the view thereof, it has pleased the Lord, during 
 a long and varied historical development, to reveal Himself and 
 declare His will unto the Church, they add that it has also " pleased 
 the Lord [Himself] to commit the same [His own revelation] wholly 
 to writing."* So that the God of heaven has proceeded author, and 
 the Old and New Testaments are the complete edition of His published 
 works. He who on IMount Sinai wrote the " ten words " on two tables 
 of stone, has, not without great variation of method, but as truly, com- 
 
 * I. " Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do 
 so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable ; 
 yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will which is 
 necessary unto salvation : therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times and in 
 diverse manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church ; 
 and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the 
 more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the 
 flesh, and the malice of Satan and the world, to commit the same tvholly unto writing, 
 which maketh Holy Scripture to be most necessary, those former ways of God's 
 revealing His will unto His people being now ceased. 
 
 II. " Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the word of God written, are now 
 contained all the books of the Old and New Testaments, which are these [naming 
 them], — all which are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life." — 
 Westminster Confession, chap. I. sections i. and ii. 
 
4 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 . mitted to writing His entire revelation, and the result is what we now 
 call the Bible. The Bible is, therefore, in the simplest which is also 
 the fullest meaning of the term, the written Word of God, — of divine 
 authorship, throughout and throughout. 
 
 Now it would not be easy to exhaust the commendation due to the 
 wisdom of the position which the Westminster Confession thus takes 
 up. Very singularly it is its glory and perfection to be at once the 
 minimum and the maximum of what is required in the matter on 
 hand. As an office-bearer in Christ's Church, I will not profess less, 
 and I will not consent to be bound to more. How indeed could I 
 profess less than that without which I could not profess, or confess, 
 anything as of faith ? And I rejoice that the least that I could 
 possibly confess, is the utmost that my Confession asks me to 
 confess. 
 
 In particular, it brings me into no bondage on questions of mrlal 
 or plenary inspiration, or of inspirations of superintendence, elevation, 
 and other measures and degrees, according to a classification that was 
 more canvassed some forty years ago than now. In fact, at this point 
 the word "inspiration" has not yet occurred at all, neither reason 
 nor opportunity for it having occurred. And it is eminently instruc- 
 tive to notice when and why it does occur. 
 
 In ihe second section, the Confession enumerates the separate 
 Ijooks which go to constitute the Scriptures of God's authorship, — 
 " Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written." But none of these came 
 ready made from heaven. They came from the pens of human 
 authors : that without doubt in all cases, in some obviously and ex 
 facie, as the Epistles of Paul, and James, and John, and Peter. Here 
 then are two concurring facts concerning these Scriptures : — God 
 
 ' committed them to writing ; men wrote them. Inspiration is the 
 tertium quid or connecting link. The concurrence and harmony, the 
 actual co-existency and unifying of these two facts, are mediated and 
 secured by what is called inspiration. Inspiration is that by which 
 this result is obtained, and we know nothing more about it. It is 
 
 . just that action of the divine will which brings the two authorships — 
 the divine and the human — into concurrence, giving to each its place, 
 and doing injustice to neither. It was needful, because what men were 
 to write was to be the Word of God ; because what God was to commit 
 to writing He was to commit to writing by the instrumentality not 
 merely of men, but of the authorship of men. That is Inspiratio7i, de- 
 fined not as in itself, but by what rendered it necessary, and by what it 
 has accomplished. In authorship exclusively human, there is, of course, 
 
 • no room for it. In authorship exclusively divine there is neither 
 room for it nor necessity. There was no inspiration when by His 
 own finger God committed to writing the ten commandments on 
 tables of stone. Divine authorship through the instrumentality of 
 human authorship ; — that calls for inspiration ; that is what inspira- 
 tion effects. And if a definition of inspiration is required, inspiration 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 5 
 
 is what effects that. More about inspiration, we do not and we cannot 
 know. More, our Confession does not profess to teach or call us to 
 believe or profess, — scarcely even that, except inferentially. Without 
 any exposition, it simply quotes (in a connection, however, that fairly 
 implies that), concerning the Old and New Testaments, the scriptural 
 assertion that they are " all given by inspiration of God " (2 Tim. 
 iii. 16). 
 
 For the avowal and maintenance, indeed, of what it is vital on this 
 great doctrine to avow and maintain, the word " inspiration " is not 
 so indispensable as many seem to have thought. My cordially 
 esteemed friend, Dr Marcus Dods, gets impatient with it, and all but 
 proposes to put it out of court. For my part, when I think of the weary 
 waste of intellect and the abundant beating of the air that have trans- 
 pired around the word, — not excluding all reference (I am sorry to say) to 
 the specimen of that same which my friend's recent sermon itself affords, 
 — I am not sure that it would be a bad plan. Magnificently, at any 
 rate, does our Confession enable us to answer the ulterior question 
 which Dr Dods goes on to ask. " For, put the word ' inspiration ' 
 out of court for a while, and what remains ? " It remains that the 
 Lord committed His own revelation to writing. 
 
 In the maintenance of this position, it is evident that very little 
 theology can be required, and, indeed, that the province of general 
 reasoning on the subject must be extremely limited. Guard the ques- 
 tion : Indicate the line of proof . These are the two duties incumbent. 
 Protect the position from misapprehension, irrelevancies, and confu- 
 sions ; and adduce, if possible, suitable proof of it, — that is to say, bring 
 forward, with sufficient clearness, divine testimony for what you thus 
 profess your own faith and claim the faith of others. — By God's bless- 
 ing I hope to do this with a fair measure of success in the few pages 
 that follow. And then I shall decline the ambition and affectation 
 of prolonging an argument after it is really closed. 
 
 GUARDING THE POSITION. 
 
 I. In guarding from misapprehensions the grandly simple position 
 of the Westminster Confession that it pleased the Lord to commit 
 His revelation to writing ; it seems obvious to remark — 
 
 1. In the first place, that nothing but some strange misapprehen- 
 sion could have given rise to the debates that have taken place about 
 verbal and plenari/ inspiration, or given rise even to these words at all, — 
 specially given rise to a contention in which they have been pitted 
 against each other. Are the Scriptures verbally inspired, or plenarily ? 
 Was there ever a more futile question ? Who that asks it has the 
 least idea about the idea which he thinks he has ? Eange the question 
 up beside the proposition, " The Lord committed His revelation wholly 
 to writing," and how its absurdity comes out ! Or if necessary, take 
 a parallel case, — which will be advantageous, at any rate, in the 
 
6 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 interests of reverence. Here am I at present, committin<T my poor 
 thoughts to writing. I suppose I must do it "verbally," if I use 
 words ! And then the little tractate will be " verbally " mine. And 
 if it be not any other body's, as I intend that it shall not be, I suppose 
 it will be " plenarily " mine. Now such trifling may be very amusing 
 concerning anything that / may commit to writing, but how it came 
 to be indulged in without being seen to be mere trifling when 
 applied to what the God of heaven has been pleased to commit to 
 writing, it is hard to see. Certainly it must have arisen from serious 
 misapprehension of what the Church believes on the matter in hand. 
 
 2. Misapprehension, also, it must evidently be, that has given 
 rise to any serious difficulty in reference to translations of Scripture. 
 The difficulty is sometimes put in this way : " What is the use of 
 insisting on any special doctrine of inspiration, when you know it 
 cannot apply to our English version ? The original Hebrew and 
 Greek may have been inspired, but you do not surely claim inspira- 
 tion for a mere translation ? " It would thus appear that inspiration 
 is conceived of as some spiritual dye or colour or flavour which is 
 washed out or evaporates in the course of translation, and that how- 
 ever good and satisfactory the translation may be. For it is not any 
 hypothetical insufficiency, erroneousness, or general badness of the 
 translation to which this melancholy result is supposed to be assign- 
 able, but to translation generally. But this is just a misapprehension, 
 or a refusal to accept in its plain and simple meaning the great truth 
 that the Scriptures are the Word of God, — God's Word committed to 
 writing by Himself. For just try the idea in relation to any other 
 book and its authorship. Here, we shall say, is Newton's Principia. 
 It was originally written in Latin, This, let us say, is an English 
 version. Is it not Newton's Principia ? Is the authorship of it gone 
 in the process of translation? That is the point. Is the written 
 Word of God no longer God's written Word, because it has been 
 translated into English ? 
 
 Holy men of old, as they were moved and guarded by the inspira- 
 tion of the Holy Ghost, wrote each of them respectively, what God 
 decreed they should write as their contributions to a volume which 
 He intended to be His own, — His own written Word and published 
 works, — His wondrous gift to the sons of men. The good Spirit 
 of God is too abounding in His goodness to have written on His 
 volume, churlishly, the formula, " Eights of translation reserved." 
 And the same all- wise Spirit of God is too abundant in wisdom and 
 too sparing of miracle to have undertaken its translation into all 
 languages (or any) Himself. But a great part of His Scripture being 
 non-miraculously translated ere the volume was completed, the Spirit 
 of the Lord, infinitely far from the character alike of churl and of 
 pedant, and not despising the translation because not divinely perfect, 
 — stamping with His approbation for ever the principle that the 
 translated Word of God is still the Word of God when translated, and 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTUKE. 7 
 
 takes rank with vet untranslated Scripture, — scrupled not freely to 
 quote, and to wield as still possessing divine character and authority, 
 what the Seventy of Alexandria had written in Greek translation of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. And if He, — being, in His graciousness, not 
 ill to please, but pleased with reverential honest effort,— counts 
 translated Scripture God's Scripture still, lue, surely, may be content. 
 
 3. To what but to mere misapprehension are we to trace the diffi- 
 culty that some have expressed in believing in the inspiration of 
 Scripture arising from the fact tliat the different human writers write 
 each in his own literary style, — so that Paul, for instance, is always 
 like himself, and quite distinguishable from Peter or John ? For 
 it would puzzle anybody who feels a difficulty in this direction, to 
 say wherein it really lies. I greatly question whether it has not from 
 the first been more a piece of intellectual gymnastic, a theologico- 
 literary conundrum, than an honest difficulty to a serious mind. 
 Craussen, in his excellent and well-known volume, has dealt with it. 
 But that is fully a generation ago, and I greatly doubt whether it is 
 quite wise to hand down to those that are coming after us the idea 
 that they cannot discuss properly the doctrine of the inspiration of 
 Scripture without seriously laying lance in rest against an old scare- 
 crow like this. What greater reason could there be for Paul writing 
 like John, than for John writing like Paul ? Or why should either 
 of them write like anybody but himself ? And if they could have 
 done so, what would it have been but a curious feat, a sport, a freak, 
 a juggle, pardonable in an hour of mirth or mystification ? — to be kept 
 far away from a serious or sacred hour. Could the Israelites have 
 made their harps to sound like trumpets, how inconceivable that they 
 should have put the trick in practice in their last melancholy dirge 
 ere they hanged their harps upon the willows, or in their first glad 
 acclaim when they resumed them ! 
 
 Does it ever occur to those who find a difficulty in the variations 
 of style among the various writers of Scripture to consider what effect 
 the suppression of these variations would have had on questions per- 
 taining to the genuineness and authenticity of these writings ? Would 
 it not have barred them out of court when coming forward to claim 
 inspiration, by raising the previous question of their common honesty 
 or truthfulness ? 
 
 In a word, any real difficulty here arises from misapprehension of 
 what inspiration was called into play to accomplish, and, of course, 
 has accomplished even unto divine perfection. It was called into 
 play to mediate between, and to harmonize in one perfect result, the 
 two facts, and the respective interests, of divine authorship and human 
 authorship. The idea that it should accomplish this in the particular 
 way of proceeding first of all to deface the human authorship in each 
 case, or in any case, of the peculiar traces, marks, and evidences of its 
 own identity, is a supreme absurdity such as the creatures of God, 
 
8 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 called pen and ink, ought not to be subjected to the degradation of 
 being compelled to assist in exposing. 
 
 Perhaps the best way of exploding this professed difficulty is to 
 insist on its rendering help where it has tried to hinder. And that 
 should be somewhat easily accomplished by the aid of some such 
 illustration as the following : — 
 
 A well-known English writer of the name of liervey desired to 
 convey to his fellow-men his sentiments on the great and vital doc- 
 trine of justification by faith. He might have constructed his intended 
 piece of authorship on any one of a vast variety of plans. He might 
 have written a letter to a friend. He might have written a sermon 
 or discourse. He might have presented his views on the subject in 
 the same direct and didactic form as Dr Owen or Dr James 
 Buchanan, in their respective volumes on the same doctrine. He 
 chose another scheme. He composed a work in the form of a 
 dialogue — the well-known dialogue between " Theron and Aspasio." 
 He conjured up, that is to say, two imaginary persons, and in the 
 conversation, the discussion, the debate in which he engages tlieni, 
 he brings out in a lively and very striking way, the various aspects 
 of the theme which he desired to elucidate. He does this by the 
 intervention of these imaginary characters, over whom, being imagi- 
 nary, he has unlimited control and power to cause them speak exactly 
 as he pleases. 
 
 The Lord God Almighty desired to convey to His creatures 
 His views of the same great doctrine. He might have done so 
 directly and immediately without the intervention of any creature, 
 real or imaginary, handling the completed treatise to the sons 
 of men, as he handed the tables of stones to Moses, out of the 
 glory of the Shechinah. But he chose another plan. He composed 
 His treatise in the form of an epistle — the well-known Epistle of 
 Paul to the Komans. So far as considerations of an d i^riori kind are 
 concerned, it might have been an ideal epistle — the writer and his 
 correspondents being as imaginary as Theron and Aspasio. And 
 then there would have been no difficulty in understanding how that 
 God Himself was the author of it. But the Lord God conjured up no 
 imaginary Paul. Being the Lord God Almighty, He had at His 
 command a veritable living writer, over whom He had, as the Lord 
 God Almighty, as much control as Hervey had over the imaginary 
 Theron and Aspasio, having also as much power to express his own 
 mind through the living voluntary conscious action of the mind of 
 the actual Apostle, as the human writer, Hervey, had to express his 
 by the ideal conversationalists of his fancy. 
 
 For this is precisely God's prerogative, namely, that by Him the 
 substance of reality cmi be secured and introduced, combined with the 
 unbounded control which no creature can have over another, — which 
 a creature can have only over the ideal creature of his imagination. 
 So that as thoroughly as Theron and Aspasio, each in his own style 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 9 
 
 and character, — the character and style that Hervey had assigned to 
 them respectively — spoke at Hervey's will, and served his purpose 
 and expressed his views ; so thoroughly and truly Paul, in his own 
 characteristic style, the style which by a long and varied dispensation 
 of tuition in providence and grace God had assigned and given to him, 
 — wrote at God's will and served God's purpose, and expressed God's 
 mind and views, — which Avere also, with profound intelligence and 
 intuitions, his own. 
 
 Or, to enlarge the scope of the illustration. It is conceivable that 
 in order to show unto the ages to come, the " blessedness of them 
 which endure," the Lord might have proceeded author of a purely 
 ideal drama, into which He should condescend Himself to enter, as 
 one of the dramatis pcrso7ia\ answering the sufferer out of the whirl- 
 wind. That is at least conceivable. But being the God of the 
 spirits of all flesh, and the God of Providence, He has at His command 
 the substratum of reality to bring in, underneath the ideal forms of 
 dramatic literature ; and as much command over veritable living men 
 as the dramatist has over his mere dramatis persona:. And accordingly, 
 — as dramatic as if it were ideal, yet as historical as by real mani- 
 festations to Adam and to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and to 
 "these" two "men Noah and Daniel"* God has become historical, 
 — we have the wondrous Book of Job ; the Lord Himself having been 
 pleased to commit it wholly to writing. Never was a great litterateur, 
 himself a dramatist, more miserably mistaken than when he thought 
 such an intemperate outcry as the following relevant against evangelical 
 doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. " What ! were the hollow 
 truisms, the unsufhcing half-truths, the false assumptions and malig- 
 nant insinuations of the supercilious bigots, who corruptly defended 
 the truth ; were the impressive facts, the piercing outcries, the pathetic 
 appeals, and the close and powerful reasoning with which the poor 
 sufferer — smarting at once from his wounds, and from the oil of vitriol 
 which the orthodox liars for God were dropping into them — im- 
 patiently, but uprightly and holily, controverted this truth, while in 
 will and in spirit he clung to it, were both dictated by an infallible 
 
 Intelligence? Alas! ." But, alas ! we have quite enough of this 
 
 utter misapprehension of the claim implied in the Divine authorship 
 of the Book of Job. That claim no more fathers " hollow truisms " 
 and " oil of vitriol " consolations on the God of truth and love, than 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, because he wrote the " Ancient Mariner," 
 
 can be held to believe that . But I haven't the weird and 
 
 w'ondrous little thing beside me to quote from. 'Tis enough. The 
 grand old talker was mistaken on the status qiiestionis, — as crowds of 
 vastly littler men are mistaken still. 
 
 * " Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it,^they should 
 deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God." — Ezek. xiv. 
 14, also verses 16, 18, and 20. These most solemn utterances (not to mention James 
 V. 11), will for ever protect the book of Job from being accounted a mere drama or 
 myth, at least by any man who fears the Lord and trembles at His Word. 
 
10 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 II. These may suflice as instances of the misapprehensions with 
 which this simple and sublime doctrine has had to contend : and in 
 now seeking to guard it similarly against the effects of confusion, I 
 shall briefly insist on a few vital and by no means mysterious 
 distinctions. 
 
 1. In the first place, it seems scarcely necessary to say that w^e must 
 distinguish between the question of Inspiration and the question of 
 the Canon. With regard to inspiration the only vital question is, 
 What effect has it produced upon the writings of which it can be 
 affirmed that they are inspired ? And the answer is, It has brought 
 it to pass that these writings are of Divine authorship — parts of that 
 record of His own revelation of Himself and declaration of His will 
 which God has been pleased to commit to writing. And if men insist 
 on putting the question in the form, What is Inspiration ? w^e must 
 just insist on answering it so as to tie down the discussion to the same 
 lines as before ; Inspiration is that sustained action of the divine will 
 on the several human writers of the Scriptures which has secured that 
 what they severally wrote should form component parts of the written 
 volume which God was engaged in composing, and which we now have 
 as " the Old and New Testaments or the Word of God written." 
 
 The question of the Canon is — What are the several books or 
 tractates of M'hich this is true ? And, of course, this again raises the 
 question of the nature and amount of evidence that can be pleaded, in 
 each case, in support of a claim so serious. There can be no doubt 
 that this opens up a line of investigation which cannot be successfully 
 prosecuted without an amount of scholarship and learning to v/hicli 
 the intelligent membership of the Church generally cannot possibly 
 hope to attain. But with regard to the Old Testament, in the first 
 place, it is matter of thankfulness that no scholarship or learning is 
 required to apprehend the bearing of the fact that the Canon of the 
 Old Testament had been completed, and even translated into Greek, 
 long before the day of Christ ; that in His day it was just what it 
 is now ; and that by freely quoting from it, the " Faithful Witness " 
 stamped it for all ages with the seal of His divine approbation. And 
 with regard to the New Testament, it is eminently satisfactory for the 
 ordinary membership of the Church to know that it is but an extremely 
 small amount of serious doubt, all things considered, that has existed on 
 the subject among reverential Christian scholars, and that between such 
 portions of the New Testament as might be said to have least claim to 
 be counted canonical, and such apocryphal writings as miglit be said to 
 make the closest approach to something like a claim, there is recognised 
 by all competent judges such a wide gap as should keep men's minds 
 very much at ease indeed. At the same time, while the Church generally 
 is in this matter very far from being seriously dependent on the labours 
 of scholars and critics, nothing could be more ridiculous than to scowl 
 upon or discourage them in their studies, unless indeed it were the 
 expectation that they could possibly or legitimately result in anything 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 11 
 
 of real magnitude, or of serious importance to the faith of any of God's 
 unlearned but lionest children anywhere, from the rising of the sun to 
 where he hath his going down. 
 
 2. We must distinguish between Inspiration and Eevelation. 
 
 Inspiration presupposes revelation, and is concerned with the 
 recording of it, or with (in the language of the Confession) the com- 
 mitting of it to writing. And the argument concerning inspiration pre- 
 supposes that the argument on the "Evidences of Divine Eevelation" 
 — the old phrase for what is now called " Apologetics " — has been led 
 and closed. ]\Ioreover the divine revelation which inspiration pre- 
 supposes and proceeds to record, is not any or every kind of revelation, 
 but God's own personal revelation of Himself and declaration of His 
 will in its bearing on " us men and our salvation." Such revelation 
 is personal, direct, free, sovereign, supernatural, and {in part at least) 
 vocal as when a man speaketh with his friend. Were it not for this, 
 — were the revelation merely naturalistic, then the record of it, for 
 anything that appears, might with all propriety, be naturalistic too. 
 I can imagine neither plea nor necessity for God to interpose person- 
 ally to put in writing a revelation Avhich He had not personally 
 interposed to give. 
 
 Of course, without special personal divine interposition there is a 
 considerable amount of revelation of God's being and perfections 
 alforded by nature, — by the works of God's hand, the constitution 
 that He has given to man, and the providence and government which 
 He constantly and silently exercises over him. God could not create 
 such a world as this, and put and keep in it an intelligent being like 
 man, without inlaying into the workmanship of His hands, and into 
 His providence over it, incontestible evidence of His own existence, 
 and considerable proofs, because traces of His wisdom, power, and 
 goodness. No one doubts, and our Confession in its very lirst clause 
 admits, that in this there is a source of knowledge of God, or if you • 
 will, of revelation, thoroughly valuable and important ; while science, * 
 glorious science, is continually reading it off to us more and more 
 fully, some of her unwitting sons labouring in the service as the 
 hardest driven Gibeonites we have ever chanced to come across 
 sweating in their toil. Long and successfully may they toil, and 
 much may they bring to light in proof of God's necessary existence 
 and God's 'necessary perfections ! But if God hath non-necessary 
 purposes, — purposes of His own free, good, and sovereign will, then a 
 kind of revelation generically different is requisite if we are to become 
 acquainted with them. 
 
 The difference may be seen by such reference to the rainbow as 
 Science and Scripture severally enable us to make. You cannot 
 look on the " triumphal arch that spans the sky when storms begin 
 to part," especially if you know anything of what science teaches 
 concerning it, without learning better and truer lessons from it than 
 the poet when he saw in it, according to his " childhood's sight, a mid- 
 
12 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 way station given, for happy spirits to alight betwixt the earth and 
 heaven." You learn from it that the great Creator has an infinite 
 mastery and command of the principles of good taste or beauty, of 
 optical science, and geometrical relations. And you are quite sure 
 tliat if " the Lord is a man of war" (Exod. xv. 3), a fortiori, the Lord 
 is a man of science. You have the revelation of nature for it. 
 
 But if, while you are thus in rapture contemplating one of nature's 
 most beautiful appearances, and silently adoring the God whom to 
 this extent it reveals, a voice breaks upon your ear, — " I created 
 that bow, it is mine : Behold, 1 do set my bow in the cloud ; and I 
 will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting covenant " 
 (Gen. ix. 8-17) ; have you not a wholly, generically, gloriously different 
 kind of " revelation " now, in comparison with which the former is 
 hardly entitled to be called revelation at all ? It is in this sense that 
 we speak of " revelation," when we plead for inspiration to record it, 
 so that the record may be divine as the revelation is. It is personal 
 revelation, free, sovereign, such as " it pleased the Lord " to give ; 
 revelation of the counsel of His will ; not ex necessitate natura\ whether 
 necessity of God's nature, or man's nature, or any kind of nature ; but 
 of the freedom and sovereignty of the divine will ; revelation of the 
 grace of God which is the goodness of God in the highest reaches of 
 that blessed attribute, of which Lord Stair speaks so wisely when he 
 says : — " We must explain God's goodness with congruity to His 
 nature, which comprehends His freedom, whereby it is not congruous 
 to Him to communicate all the good He can, which would never 
 terminate or be stable, but that He acteth freely, and that it were 
 impossible for us to know what good He hath done or will do, if He 
 hud not revealed it."* 
 
 But a greater than Lord Stair has reasoned in this same line of 
 thought. " What man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of 
 man which is in him 1 Even so the things of God knoweth no man, 
 but the Spirit of God," Much concerning human nature may be 
 learned by observation and general human consciousness. But the 
 things of a particular man, his personal thoughts and purposes, what 
 man can know save the spirit of the man himself which is in him ? 
 Even so, if God has thoughts and purposes towards sinful man, 
 thoughts of peace and purposes of grace ; if He has in store what can 
 
 See this sentence ([uoted and commented upon -with admirable appreciation by 
 A. Taylor Innes, Esq., in his article on "Lord Stair's Vindication of the Divine 
 Perfections," in the current number of the British and Foreicjn Evangelical Revieic, 
 a service for which Mr Taylor Innes deserves very hearty thanks. I have the very 
 greatest pleasure in asking my intelligent reader's best attention to another clause in 
 the sentence quoted, besides that v?hich for my present purpose I have put in italics. 
 I mean, of course, the singularly precious proposition, "It is not congruous to God 
 to communicate all the good He can," with the equally striking reason so quietly 
 assigned for the truth of it, " which would never terminate nor be stable." All this 
 is fitted to lead out into glorious views of grace ; nor is there any inconsistency, but 
 rather mutual illustrativeness, between what is here said and God's marvellous 
 question, " What more could I have done for my vineyard that I have not done ? " 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE, 1 3 
 
 1)6 called " the things which God hath prepared for them that love 
 Him ; " if, in the searchless depths of His wisdom, there be what can 
 properly be designated as "the wisdom of God in a mystery, the 
 hidden wisdom, which God hath ordained before the world unto our 
 glory ; " these being such as neither can the eye see nor the ear hear, 
 nor the heart or reason of man discover, it is impossible that we can 
 know them, unless God reveal them to us by His Spirit, even the 
 Spirit who searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God ; " " the 
 Spirit which is of God," and which those who believe receive, " that 
 they may know the things that are " not ex necessitate, but " freely 
 given us of God " (1 Cor. ii. 1-16). Such is the revelation of which 
 Paul was a minister : in which we have " the testimony of God," 
 " the mind of Christ," " the things of the Spirit ; " personal revelation, 
 supernatural, of course, free and sovereign, historical also, and often 
 vocal ; not naturalistically developed, and, therefore, not to be 
 naturalistically recorded, but, personally, by God's own Spirit, making 
 the written record personally divine, even as the revelation is. For 
 that, as 1 take it, is Paul's meaning, when he says, " Which things we 
 speak not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the 
 Holy Ghost teacheth " (verse 13). But this is trenching on the line 
 of proof, while w^e are as yet but merely clearing the ground and 
 guarding the question or the position. 
 
 Such is the kind of revelation which we plead for when we would 
 justify the inspiration which we advocate ; supernatural ; transcending 
 nature even unto such extent that the whole material universe of God 
 might have been gloriously honoured to have been called in to assist 
 in effecting it. Who that understands how the whole material uni- 
 verse sinks into nothing if intelligence retires from looking on it, and 
 is lighted up again in all its glory if intelligence returns, would for a 
 moment doubt, that had no other outward means been available for 
 communicating God's mind, in sovereign saving grace to man, the stars 
 in their courses might have been proud to range themselves night 
 after night in heaven's blue vault so as to spell out such sentences as 
 these :— " The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which 
 was lost : " " Come unto me, and I will give you rest : " " Look unto 
 me and be ye saved, for I am God, and there is none else : " " The Son 
 of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins : " " Thy sins be forgiven 
 thee ; go in peace." Well might Mazzaroth, both in season and out of 
 season ; and Arcturus, with his sons ; and Pleiades, with all their 
 sweet influences, have yielded themselves servants to proclaim the 
 sweeter influences of the kingdom of grace, till on the entablature of 
 midnight heaven there had "flamed out in stellar radiance the tele- 
 grams : " There shall be a fountain opened for sin and uncleanness : " 
 " By grace are ye saved : " " It is of faith, that it might be by grace, 
 to the end the promise might be sure." And as, while the campaign 
 lasts, the general changes his watchword night after night ; even so 
 might earth's expectant children, ever as the light of day began to 
 
14 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 wane, have beeu seen congregating under heaven's canopy oracular, 
 to read in such stellar symbols another and another message from the 
 throne of God, another and another thought from the intellect and 
 heart of the God of their redemption. And as the covenant of God's 
 grace for our salvation and " our glory " (1 Cor. ii. 7), was thus, by 
 the ministry of planets and of constellations, read off to a listening 
 world, all nature's grandest elements being impressed into the work 
 of revealing the hope that is set before us, who will venture to deny 
 that this were a subjection of nature, or the material worlds, to the 
 interests and history of our redemption, all too inadequate to give 
 expression to the transcendant preciousness of that revelation which 
 the Scriptures record as exceedingly abundantly, yea, infinitely, above 
 all that nature can convey ? And yet, " on the principles laid down 
 in these days by some men who profess themselves friends of 
 Christianity, but who are nevertheless subverters of the truth once 
 delivered to the saints, evidence in proof of a divine revelation is im- 
 possible, being beyond the power of God Himself to furnish. Even 
 should they see it written in characters of fire in the firmament that 
 the Bible is the Word of God, they could not believe, so true is the 
 declaration of the Faithful and the True Witness ; — ' If they hear not 
 Moses and the prophets, neither would they be persuaded though one 
 rose from the dead.' " * 
 
 3. We must distinguish between inspiration and spiritual enlighten- 
 ment. The latter belongs to all gracious souls, according to the faithful 
 promise made to those who obey the Gospel call, — whereby indeed 
 they are enabled to obey it : " Turn you at my reproof ; behold, I will 
 pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you " 
 (Prov. i. 23) ; or again : " Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from 
 the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Eph. v. 14). This illumina- 
 tion stands related to the spiritual understanding of the written Word. 
 Inspiration stands related to the writing of it. Even those who, by 
 inspiration, wrote it needed spiritual enlightenment to understand 
 what they had written : and the distinction is very clearly put by the 
 apostle when he represents the prophets as the humble students of 
 their own writings : " Of which salvation the prophets have enquired 
 and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come 
 unto you ; searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ 
 which was in them did signify, when he testified beforehand of the 
 sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow " (1 Pet. i. 10, 11). 
 And so distinct was their inspiration from revelation on the one hand, 
 and from spiritual enlightenment on the other, that what their inspira- 
 tion had enabled them fcrfcdly to record, their spiritual light enabled 
 them only ]}artly to understand, and there was much connected with 
 it on which they still needed revelation, insomuch that " unto them it 
 
 * See the truly excellent and learned pamphlet of Rev. Robert Williamson, of 
 Ascog, which has just come into my hands, entitled, " The Gospels prior in point of 
 time to the Epistles, and therefore not the products of a Post- Apostolic period." 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTUiiE. 15 
 
 was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister 
 the things that are now reported unto you with the Holy Ghost sent 
 down from heaven" (verse 12). One would think that with such clear 
 distinctions as these, presented to us so strikingly in Scripture itself, 
 confusion should be difficult of occurrence, and easily cleared away 
 when it occurs. In particular, the difference between the inspiration 
 of a writer of the word, and the spiritual illumination of a believing 
 reader of it, should not require much to make it patent or enforce 
 attention to it. 
 
 Accordingly T had purposed very briefly to indicate this source of 
 confusion and pass on ; when, to my astonishment, Dr Marcus Dods's 
 sermon on " Revelation and Inspiration " came into my hands, and 
 turned out, on perusal, to be from first to last another instance of the 
 same confounding of things which differ so patently ; and so I have to 
 tarry in this connection, and to point out the fallacies which pervade 
 my esteemed friend's discourse, and the one great leading cause or 
 source of them. I need not say that I have a very sore feeling of 
 disappointment in having any such duty to discharge, because I cordi- 
 ally recognise in Dr Dods such uncommon faculty of spiritual intuition 
 as makes me a glad and grateful learner when he comes forward to 
 teach, as he is in many respects so well entitled to do. In fact, I 
 honestly believe him to be possessed of a considerable share of what 
 he here describes as " inspiration," though of course I do not believe 
 him to be inspired. I would, however, require to believe that, if I 
 admitted that he put things on a right footing, when he says, concern- 
 ing Paul, " I believe him to be inspired, because he brings light to my 
 spirit, which can only have proceeded from God." The inspiration 
 which the Westminster Confession avers is no subjective faculty, ' 
 enabling its possessor either personally to see or publicly to teach ; 
 but an acting of the divine will to secure, as its objective result, a 
 Scripture, or written Word, of which, through the instrumentality of 
 human authorship, God shall be the author. But completely passing 
 over this, the true distinguishing and essential idea of Inspiration, 
 Dr Dods was fatally bound to go wrong from the very outset, and 
 extremely likely both to start new errors by the way, and to land at 
 last in a false conception of the use of Holy Scripture. I think it will 
 be easy to show that he has done all these things. 
 
 I have no intention to charge Dr Dods with denying the divine 
 authorship of the Scriptures. But he has not affirmed their divine 
 authorship : and yet he has published a sermon on " Revelation and 
 Inspiration." On the first page of it we find these words, — " Some 
 other sacred books profess to be a revelation, to be written by God or 
 at His dictation ; but the Bible, without saying anything about its 
 authorship, at once commences its task of giving a clear and con- 
 secutive and complete account of the various revelations of Himself 
 which God has made to man. It is to this aspect of the Bible as a 
 record of historical revelations I desire now to direct attention." 
 
6 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 Now, while there is in this no direct denial that the Bible — this 
 " record of historical revelations " — is a divine record, as truly divine 
 as the revelations it records are divine, it must be obvious that it looks 
 askance at that idea, and seems to put it in some peril. It speaks of 
 other sacred books claiming " to be written by God ; " and against this 
 theiv false claim, it fails to present the same as a true claim on the Bible's 
 behalf. Farther, it seems, at least, and may be held, to countenance that 
 gross perversion of the true idea of inspiration on which Coleridge's 
 intemperate and flaming wrath ran out at such length — the notion that 
 it is identical with " dictation ; " for it is hard to say whether Dr Dods 
 means these two things to be alternative or equivalent, — " written by 
 God or at His dictation." And though I will not believe that he 
 means to deny that the Bible " says anything," anywhere, " about its 
 authorship," but only that it " conmiences its task " without doing so ; 
 yet all this is fitted to produce a painful impression, and to suggest 
 the idea that Dr Dods shrinks from maintaining the doctrine that " it 
 pleased God Himself to commit His revelation to writing." For here 
 was the place to affirm that doctrine distinctly, namely, when he was 
 professedly about to proceed to speak of inspiration. Defined along 
 the lines of its necessity and its result, inspiration can be intelligently 
 and somewhat hopefully discussed ; at least we shall know what we 
 are about, and may expect to be able to maintain some orderliness 
 of thought. But wdien the great end for the securing of which any- 
 thing that shall be called specifically and peculiarly " inspiration " is 
 needed, is thrown out of view, everything specific and peculiar in 
 inspiration is lost sight of, and something is certain to be presented 
 to our view which never needed that nor any other distinctive word 
 to express it. I put it to every intelligent reader of Dr Dods's sermon, 
 and to my friend himself, whether this is not exactly what has 
 happened in his hands. The inspiration to which he " directs atten- 
 tion " is itself nothing specific, for it secures or accomplishes nothing 
 specifically different from what might have been, in some degree, though, 
 no doubt, a less degree, secured by uninspired writers, — honest, able, 
 and competent, but uninspired. It would be perfectly hopeless, on 
 such a scheme, to define the words " canonical " and " apocryphal ; " 
 and, what is much more serious, it would be impossible to secure a 
 fixed and honourable application of them. If inspiration is not a 
 thing of thorough distinctiveness, but of measure and degree, in 
 which others besides the writers of the Scripture have shared, then 
 there is and can be no sure enclosure, railing in certain books as 
 canonical, and barring out others as apocryphal. The sacred books 
 merge into the world's honest literature generally, without a break, 
 blending and shading off imperceptibly, without any dividing line 
 which we could be given to understand that we had either trans- 
 gressed or respected — to which we could either do justice or injustice. 
 I do not believe that Dr Dods intends that his speculations should 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 17 
 
 result in anything like this ; but such is certainly their logical out- 
 going ; and it was bound to be the outcome of his descriptions of an in- 
 spiration not designed to secure the supreme divine authorship of the 
 writings concerned. This inspiration, in fact, may be defined as being, 
 just everything except what could effect that result. It is a compound 
 of a little, or rather not a little, revelation properly so called ; of a 
 more than ordinary amount of grace, in the form of spiritual light or 
 illumination ; of what may be called, favourable providential circum- 
 stances ; and of those particular gifts and graces that are required for 
 the office of the Christian ministry : all resulting in what is called 
 " special equipment." The verification of this estimate or analysis would 
 just require me to transcribe continuously the four paragraphs of the 
 sermon beginning on page 12, and ending on page 15 ; and 1 do not 
 suppose that its accuracy will be questioned. No intelligent person 
 can read these pages without seeing by the naked eye, so to speak, 
 that the inspiration there described was certainly not confined to the 
 writers of Holy Scripture. There were most certainly others besides 
 them who " had the revelation at first hand : " who were by divine 
 grace " set in a right attitude to Him they were to reflect, and made 
 sensitive to everything in Him that was of the highest value ; " 
 who were " one with Him in character and will ; " who were partakers 
 of the promise, " He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, 
 he it is that loveth me ; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my 
 Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him : " who 
 were " emptied of self-seeking and worldly ways of looking at things : " 
 who could therefore " utter authoritatively what they saw, knowing 
 that it was not their own will they were declaring, but the will of 
 God : " and of whom it could not be doubted that they had been made 
 partakers of a spiritual gift that " illuminated the mind as enthusiasm 
 does, by stimulating and elevating it, and enriched the memory as 
 love does, by intensifying the interest in a certain object and by mak- 
 ing the mind sensitive to its impressions and retentive of them." 
 What, therefore, these persons, being thus properly and "specially 
 equipped," might choose to write in the same kind with what the 
 Scripture writers (properly so called) had written, would have the 
 same sort of claim to be included among the sacred writings ; and 
 rules for the formation of a canon on such a scheme of things it would 
 be simply and absolutely impossible to frame. 
 
 Little wonder that, having reached no higher, clearer, more distinc- 
 tive idea of inspiration than this, Dr Dods should himself get im- 
 patient with it, and so disrespectful towards it as to propose to turn 
 it out of court, finishing off with making a present of it to anybody 
 who chooses to accept it, with certification that little is either lost or 
 gained by its rejection or acceptance. And so the train of speculation 
 winds up with what appears on the left side of these parallel columns, 
 and which, were I getting impatient with the word " inspiration " too, 
 I would propose to replace with what I put on the right side : — 
 
18 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 "For my part, I do not care what For my part, I do not care what 
 
 meaning a man attaches to the word meaning a man attaches to the word 
 
 'inspired,' nor, indeed, whether he says "inspired," nor, indeed, whether he 
 
 these epistles are inspired or not, so says these epistles are inspired or not, 
 
 long as he accepts their teaching. so long as he accepts their divine 
 
 authorship. 
 
 The only inspiration worth contend- The only inspiration worth contend- 
 ing for is the ability to see and repi-e- ing for is the ability to represent a 
 sent truly a revelation of God. revelation of God so as that it shall 
 
 he God's representation of it. 
 
 I do not believe what Paul says, I do believe what Paul says, because 
 because I first believe him to be in- he is inspired ; and because he is in- 
 spired ; but I believe him to be in- spired I may expect, and I do pray 
 spired because he brings light to my that he may bring light to my spirit 
 spirit which can only have proceeded such as could only proceed from 
 from God." God. 
 
 If the Westminster doctrine of inspiration be true, defined as it is 
 by its result, in a volume of God's own writing, then the volume is 
 that " Word of God " with which the Spirit of God may for ever 
 abide, and by which He may speak and judge in the Church of God 
 continually. It is the voice of God, the living word, which like God 
 Himself who dwells in it, liveth and abideth for ever. Hence it is 
 surely incorrect, though painfully consistent with an inspiration fall- 
 ing short of that of our Confession, to speak, as Dr Dods does, of " the 
 Bible not doing its work till it takes us past itself, and makes us in- 
 dependent of it " (page 18). If it is a divine record of divine revela- 
 tion, then it is the continuance and perpetuation of that revelation, 
 and to talk of becoming "independent of it," is to contradict the 
 spiritual instincts of faith and the whole reason of the case. For in 
 that case it is the voice of Christ, and it is impossible to set Christ's 
 voice over against Christ Himself, contradistinguishingly, so as to be 
 able, with any show of reason, to represent it as fulfilling no higher 
 function in communicating to us the true knowledge of God, than the 
 woman of Samaria to her fellow-citizens, insomuch that we might 
 warrantably say to it, as Dr Dods recommends its believing readers to 
 say, " Now we believe, not because of thy saying ; for we have heard 
 Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour 
 of the world." On the contrary, we ought rather, if such apostrophe 
 is to be employed, exactly to reverse the line of thought on which it 
 runs, and saw, " Now we believe jnst because of thy saying ; for it is 
 by thy saying (because it is His saying) that we have heard Him." In 
 like manner, on the view of inspiration ^vhich I plead for, I would 
 not contradistinguish so sharply and absolutely as Dr Dods does, 
 between "belief in Christ on the authority of Scripture," and "be- 
 lief in Him from personal acquaintance ; " for belief in Him, on the 
 authority of Scripture, is belief in Him on His oini authority ; being 
 in fact the living flash of identification between the word as written 
 and the living voice of Him whose word it is. " For this cause we 
 thank God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 19 
 
 God, which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of man, but, 
 as it is in truth, the word of God, whicli effectually worketh also in 
 you who believe " (1 Thes. ii. 13). And finally, instead of saying with 
 my friend in the last word of counsel which he builds upon his theory 
 of inspiration, " Search the Scriptures, for they are they which testify 
 of Christ, hut it is Christ Himself who is the light of every man that 
 Cometh into the world," I would be inclined to say, " Search the 
 Scriptures, for they are they which testify of Christ, and Christ Him- 
 self (through their testimony, because it is His oiun) is the light of 
 every one that cometh into the world." I repeat that living faith is 
 the living flash of identification of the written word with the voice of 
 God ; but if the w^ord written be not committed to writing by Him, 
 this contradistinguishing may be both warrantable and inevitable, and 
 the identification desiderated shall be impossible. And then it is 
 simply a tie, or an even chance, between scepticism and fanaticism. 
 If, on the contrary, God has Himself committed His revelation to 
 writing, then by that written word as His own, the divine Spirit may 
 speak and judge ; and both scepticism and fanaticism are barred out 
 for ever. I can scarcely doubt that, in the main, Dr Dods agrees with 
 me in all this, though I think the last two pages of his sermon point 
 somewhat in the direction of fanaticism ; and the fatal tendency of 
 his silence concerning our Confession's doctrine of inspiration, and his 
 attempt (apparently) to replace it with what does not secure a divinely 
 written Scripture, was almost certain to crop out (in the case of an 
 earnest devotional spirit like his) in the way of at least seeming to 
 assert or desiderate a direct fellowship with Christ " independent " of 
 the Bible, and as supplementing the insufficiency of a Scripture not 
 affirmed to be divine. How could I so fail in my duty as to abstain 
 from asking my friend what he can possibly mean by a " private reve- 
 lation of God to ourselves," a " close and impressive revelation, by 
 which we may be more affected than we have ever been by the Bible ? " 
 I do not believe that he intends fanaticism ; but if he did, I ask in what 
 fitter forms of speech he could couch it ? 
 
 In a word, this sermon is unworthy of the fine gifts of one whom 
 we all esteem so much, and of the ^jrcedarum vcmrabile nomen which 
 these gifts enable him to wear so worthily and well. If he would but 
 maintain and defend the Westminster doctrines of inspiration, as he is 
 so much better able to do than I am, he would find within its impreg- 
 nable entrenching circumvallation — its glorious "wall of fire round 
 about " — abundant scope for all legitimate enquiry into the " special 
 equipment " which the Scripture writers possessed for recording the 
 revelations which God made to man : he would assist very admirably 
 in proving that there can be no position so fitted to promote honour- 
 ably free thought among reverential students ; that it is, as I have 
 said, at once the minimum and the maximum of what we ought to 
 unite in believing and proclaiming on the subject ; and that it repre- 
 sents nothing as inconsistent with inspiration which is consistent with 
 
20 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 truth and honour, in a word with the divine law, among human 
 authors, — the plan and condescension of God being such that He has 
 accomplished or secured His own authorship of Holy Scripture through 
 the instrumentality of the authorship of men, whom He reduced not to 
 the level of machines, but made the real and intelligent fellow- workers 
 with God. Doubtless connected with the position, " The Bible is the 
 record of divine revelation," there must be many fine lines of thinking, 
 many interesting topics of enquiry. Will the topics of enquiry be less 
 interesting, or the lines of thought less fascinating, which connect 
 themselves with the position, " The Bible is the divine record of divine 
 revelation " ? I simply scout the idea that I am less free, or more 
 " narrow," because I maintain the latter and grander doctrine. Dr 
 Dods, I am sure, will not assign to me offensive epithets like these. 
 But I am very sorry that his sermon should even seem to give 
 countenance to those orators who are now found attacking any man 
 who defends the noble Westminster Confession. 
 
 4. Finally, we must distinguish between the two similar but 
 thoroughly distinct propositions, — " The Bible is the Word of God," 
 and "the Word of God is in the Bible." 
 
 Whether the Bible is the Word of God or not, it was impossible 
 but that it should, if at all a genuine and averagely correct record, 
 have somewhat of the Word of God in it. The revelation of which it 
 is a record, is a historical revelation in which the Lord God appeared 
 again and again, one may say habitually, as a historical personage 
 directly expressing his mind by word of mouth, according to the 
 sublime language of the Psalm, " The mighty God, even the Lord, 
 hath spoken." In such a record, therefore, composed on any principle 
 that can be imagined, such as would render it of any real use what- 
 soever, it could not but be that not a little of the word of God should 
 be found on its pages. The words of God would be in the Bible. 
 But that is very far from amounting to the import of the proposition, 
 " The Bible is the word of God." 
 
 Let the contents of the Bible be analysed with a view to the 
 interests of this distinction, and they may be arranged under three 
 departments : — 
 
 (1.) First, there are the direct utterances of God Himself as the 
 immediate speaker, interlocutor, or dramcdis persona, for the time 
 being, in each several case. The Bible behoved to record or engross 
 them. Hence we have such as the following : — The first creative 
 utterance, " Let there be light : " the divine conference, " Let us make 
 man in our image : " the covenant of life inaugurated, " Of every tree 
 of the garden," &c. ; and the ordinance of marriage, " It is not good 
 that the man should be alone : " God's call to Adam after the fall, 
 "Where art thou?" and his addresses to Satan, to Adam, and to 
 Eve respectively : the divine expostulation with Cain, " Why art 
 thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen ? " conversations with 
 Noah, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob : God's words to Moses at the 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 21 
 
 bush : full injunctions and directions towards the exodus : the ten 
 commandments : whole chapters of directions to Moses : onward 
 through the Psahus, where such direct utterances of God occur as 
 those in the 2d and 110th Psalms, " Thou art my Son, this day 
 have I begotten thee," " Thou art a priest for ever after the order of 
 Melchizedec : " again, whole chapters of utterances to the prophets 
 beginning, " Thus saith the Lord : " sermons, parables, speeches, con- 
 versations, by God incarnate on the earth : Plis personal expostulation 
 with Saul from heaven, " Why persecutest thou me ? " the words 
 of the Holy Ghost to the Apostles, " Separate me Saul and 
 Barnabas for the work whereunto I have called them : " seven letters 
 to the Churches from God incarnate, from His glory : and lastly, His 
 final w^ords till He come again, " I am the root and the offspring of 
 David, the bright and morning star : and behold ! I come quickly : 
 Amen." — All these, it is readily granted, are the words of God. I do 
 not say that they are inspired, for inspiration is predicted not of 
 merely spoken divine words recorded honestly, unless also they be 
 divinely recorded. But all these are the words of God, and recorded 
 in the Scriptures. Thus the Word of God is in the Bible. 
 
 (2.) But, secondly, there are in the Bible also utterances not of 
 God, but of various of His creatures, some of them taking shape 
 evidently under divine grace and teaching, though not always under 
 revelation, others sufficiently far from indicating that they had been 
 given either by inspiration or as part of the truth of God. Adam's 
 evasive, servile excuse, " The woman gave unto me : " Eve's similarly 
 deceptive plea, " The serpent beguiled me : " Cain's reckless, defiant 
 insult to his God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" the blasphemy of 
 Job's wife : the letter of Eabshakeh ; and that of Claudias Lysias : 
 the despairing cry of Judas : a quotation from a heathen poet : and 
 utterances of the devil himself. No one certainly imagines these 
 to be inspired, or in any sense divine. But wdiat then ? they are 
 recorded hy inspiration. They are, by inspiration, engrossed into 
 God's book, and in that sense form part of God's book, or inspired 
 Scriptures, precisely as engrossed matter appearing in any book 
 of human authorship forms part of such book without creating any 
 perplexity as to the author's precise relation to it. A human writer, 
 composing a book, in the main a new work, may quote and engross 
 in it the sayings, the speeches, the letters of others, — nay, sayings 
 and letters and speeches of his own, — which may have appeared in 
 other publications, or never been published before at all. Why may 
 not God ? And if a human author may quote into his new w'ork old 
 sayings of his own, without suggesting the idea that the new work is 
 any less entirely Ms than the old sayings which he quotes ; and 
 without making himself responsible for the sayings of others that he 
 quotes ; why may it not be so equally when God is the author ? 
 
 (3.) But, thirdly, to complete this view of Scripture's contents : 
 there is the entire new matter — neither utterances by the Creator nor 
 
22 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 any of His creatures — in the setting of which these utterances 
 appear : new matter coming fresh from the pens of the human writers, 
 and shaping itself into all variety of forms, — the narrative, the 
 prophetic, the poetical, the psalmodic, the apothegmatical, the horta- 
 tory, the epistolary, — in short, the " diverse ways " in which God at 
 " sundry times" hath spoken unto the fathers and unto their children, 
 by the prophets and hj His Son and by the apostles. And here again, 
 considering this wonderful diversity, it could scarcely fail that there 
 should be embodied into his complete work not a few extracts for which, 
 as in themselves, no wise man would dream of claiming inspiration, but 
 merely that by inspiration they had been recorded and commented on. 
 But does this militate against the position that the whole Bible is the 
 word of God ? A human author, when the plan and drift of his work 
 require it, never hesitates to quote into his book, an Act of Parliament 
 — figures from a statistical table, — information from the Dooms-day 
 Book, — from a volume of national heraldry — from a genealogical tree, 
 from the British INIuseum or Bodleian Library, — from private family 
 records, or the archives of a kingdom. If such liberty is accorded to 
 human authors, why not to God ? If it pleased Him to commit His 
 revelation to writing, who shall limit Him in the plan and range of 
 method of authorship His infinite wisdom shall see fit to adopt ? 
 Hence if documents, Elohistic and Jehovistic, as the critics say, can be 
 proved to have been drawn upon in the composition of Genesis, there 
 is nothing in the doctrine of Inspiration to prevent it, or to prevent 
 the quiet belief of it ; and if reverential and truly learned criticism 
 and historical investigation would only consent to confine themselves 
 to their legitimate functions, there is, among intelligent believing men, 
 as little desire, as there is power, to limit or hinder them. To the 
 great truth, however, for which we believe we have God's own testi- 
 mony, namely, that the record of His revelation is not less divine than 
 the revelation itself is, and is indeed that revelation lighted up with 
 perpetual vitality and glory, — to this most glorious truth, all the 
 efforts of criticism and historical enquiry stand related, in respect oi' 
 magnitude, as the little ant-hills which a spade may shovel aside, to 
 the glories of Mont Blanc, or rather of Mount Zion which Jehovah 
 hath chosen for His rest. 
 
 INDICATING THE LINE OF PROOF. 
 
 Hitherto we liave been occupied exclusively in guarding the 
 position, in merely stating the question and protecting it from the 
 deranging influence of misapprehensions as to its real meaning, and of 
 confusions of idea concerning it. It now remains that I should 
 briefly indicate the line of proof Of course it must be borne in mind 
 that I am not composing a treatise, but merely giving some hints. 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 23 
 
 And indeed the argument on the hicrits may be somewhat easily 
 dealt with, if tliat on the iiicaniiKj has been successfully disposed of. 
 
 1. In proceeding to prove that in the Old and New Testaments, wo. 
 have what the Lord Himself committed to writing, it is matter of 
 thankfulness that there is no antecedent improbability requiring to be 
 ^■anquished or got rid of. None but an atheist would attempt to bar 
 the proof by the allegation of impossibility. And no man can allege 
 improbability on the ground of its being improbable that God should 
 be an author or writer at all ; for, whether of the Old and New Testa- 
 ment Scriptures or not, an author and a writer God certainly is. He 
 is the author of the ten commandments, and that He wrote them is 
 affirmed with extraordinary emphasis and frequency. " And the Lord 
 said unto Moses, come up unto me into the mount, and be there : and 
 I M'ill give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which 
 I HAVE WRITTEN " (Exod. xxiv. 12). And when God did as He had 
 thus said, it is especially noted that His promise w^as literally fulfilled: 
 " He gave unto Moses, wdien he had made an end of communing with 
 him in Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, ^vrittex 
 WITH THE FINGER OF GoD " (Exod. xxxi. 18). Very expressly, also, as 
 the last circumstance rehearsed, while Moses descends from the moun- 
 tain, is this most remarkable fact recorded : that not only were " the 
 tables the work of God," but " the writing was the writing of God, 
 graven on the tables" (Exod. xxxii. 16). And three separate times 
 does Moses, in Deuteronomy, recall the M'ondrous specialty : " And he 
 wrote them upon two tables of stone ; " " And he wrote them in two 
 tables of stone, and delivered them unto me ; " " Tables of stone, 
 written with the finger of God " (Deut. iv. 13 ; v. 22 ; ix. 10). To 
 this at least, if not to more extensive materials of authorship, the Lord 
 refers when He says in Hosea viii. ] 2, " 1 have written unto him the 
 great things of my law." That He is, therefore, an author and a 
 writer ; that He has published waitings of His own, more or less 
 extensive, under His own divine hand and " finger," is absolutely 
 certain. Against His being the author or writer of Holy Scripture 
 "wholly," there is therefore no feasible probability of any kind. 
 Ground for reasonable prejudice against the great doctrine which, 
 with all honest signatories of the Westminster Confession, I assert, 
 maintain, and defend, there is absolutely none. 
 
 2. On the contrary, all reasonable probabilities are in favour of it : 
 in favour, that is, of the expectation that God — whose glory is thus seen 
 to be in no respect trenched upon by His condescending to become an 
 author — should be the author of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 That God should give a merely human record of a divine revelation 
 does not commend itself to enlightened reason. It would seem to be 
 such a violation of all suitableness and proportion as we could not 
 attribute to the all-wise God. " Men do not put new wine into old 
 bottles: they put new wine into new bottles, and both are pre- 
 served." And here, preservation is especially in view. " For the 
 
24 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 better ijrescrving and propagating of the truth," says our Con- 
 fession, "the Lord was pleased to commit the same wholly to 
 writing." Also, — " for the more sure establishment and comfort 
 of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice 
 of Satan and of the world." How these ends Avere to be secured 
 by a fallible record of an infallible revelation ; that is to say, 
 how its original infallibility could be brought to bear for future service- 
 ableness if fallibly represented, it is hard to conceive. And, above all, 
 if the record is designed by divine wisdom to be a prolongation and 
 perpetuation of the revelation itself, then the expectation that the one 
 shall be as truly divine as the other, may surely most warrantably be 
 indulged in the very highest degree. And this the Westminster 
 Divines are to be understood as not obscurely hinting at, but rather 
 somewhat distinctly alleging, when they say — "which maketh the 
 Holy Scripture to be most necessary, those former ways of God's 
 revealing His will unto His people being now ceased." " Those/orwer 
 ways:" so that, in their judgment, Holy Scripture is God's prescnf 
 and perpetual way of revealing Himself and declaring His will unto 
 His Church. In that case, it would appear that God must keep the 
 record in His own hand, as much as the revelation, since in point of 
 fact it is still revelation of Himself in which He is engaged, when He 
 is engaged in bringing about the composition of the record, and in com- 
 mending and securing the use of it in all after-ages. It cannot, then, 
 be under the superintendence of His mere ordinary providence that 
 the volume shall be composed and published. To accomplish the end 
 in view, God, it would appear, must create a new thing on the earth, 
 yet not novel in kind, but the same in kind, though on larger scale, as 
 when He wrote the ten words with His own finger on tables of stone. 
 If He is to go on revealing Himself and His will, " those former ways " 
 of His doing so "being now ceased," it would seem probable, in the very 
 highest degree, that He will do this in the way of giving a divine and 
 therefore infallible representation and record of " those former ways " 
 themselves. Were the problem presented in some such terms as these : 
 Given a long series of divine revelations which are now to cease ; and 
 given, that God designs still to go on revealing Himself ; required the 
 most probable method by which this may be accomplished : — I can, 
 for my part, imagine no solution but that the Lord should Himself 
 commit that series of revelations to writing, so as that He might set His 
 face to the record as being as truly His own as the revelations origi- 
 nally were. At all events, I greatly doubt whether any reasonable 
 being in all the universe would have suggested that the problem might 
 be solved and the object secured, by a human, fallible, and imperfect 
 tradition of the revelations that had come to a close. That, certainly, 
 could make not even the slightest approximation towards being equiva- 
 lent to a resumption, prolongation, or continuance of them. Nothing 
 short of an infallible, divinely perfect embodiment of them in written 
 discourse could meet the requirements of the case, or perpetuate them 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 2o 
 
 as tlie living oracles of God. For not a dead history is desiderated, 
 but a " word of God which shall live and abide for ever " — for ever 
 settled on heaven, for ever vocal on earth. 
 
 3. In the view of every reverential believing mind, this probability 
 intensifies into certainty when we consider in what permanent relation 
 the Spirit of God is to stand to these Scriptures, and what use He is 
 to make of them as the ages move along. He is to dwell in them. 
 He is to dwell in them, even so as that, instinct with His vitalizing 
 presence, they shall live and abide for ever, and be themselves verily 
 spirit and life. He is to mirror His own mind in them to all ages, 
 committing Himself to them as a satisfactory expression of His own 
 thoughts, of " the things of the Spirit," — a satisfactory presentation of 
 the character of Him who is the image of the invisible God, — a 
 satisfactory apocalypse or unveilment of the gracious purposes and 
 love of the everlasting Father in the Son of His love. In them the 
 triune God is to dwell and shine and speak ; insomuch that spiritual 
 desire may not fanatically, but with divine warrant, entreat Him who 
 dwells between the cherubims to shine forth ; to open our eyes that 
 we may see wondrous things out of His law ; and to unstop deaf ears 
 that men may hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches. A com- 
 bination of diverse yet concurrent figures of speech thus becomes 
 available. And considering that the Holy Scriptures, by the relation 
 in which the Holy Spirit stands to them, thus become the mirror in 
 which alone Christ is to be seen shining — " the root and the offspring of 
 David, the bright and morning star " — until He come again without 
 sin unto salvation : the garments of light and revelations, clothed 
 with which He walketh among the seven golden candlesticks, and we 
 behold the goings of our King in the sanctuary : the telephone by 
 which He livingly, even by His own voice (which His sheep may 
 know and do know, and which He never will repudiate or disown) 
 still "testifieth these things unto the Churches:" spiritual reason 
 abhors the thought of fallibility and imperfection being predicable of 
 them — demands that they be, in the simplest meaning of the terms, 
 " the written word of God," having God literally for their author and 
 writer. To a soul that has bowed before the authority and power 
 with which faith recognises the Spirit of God speaking in the Scriptures, 
 the idea that that Holy Spirit of God stands only in the same relation 
 to these Scriptures as to any good pious book of mere human author- 
 ship, is utterly intolerable : and adoring faith and spiritual reason 
 demand that it be a divine instrument wherewith the divine Spirit 
 shall abide in all ages so intimately related, achieving by means of it 
 results so divine as the regeneration of the souls of men, and then the 
 ever-growing revelation to them of the beauty, and communication of the 
 mind, of the Lord. A mere human Scripture, used in such manner and 
 for such ends by the divine Spirit, is to sanctified reason inconceivable. 
 It is an instinct of faith to predicate perfection of every work of God : 
 but faith rejects the idea of a perfect prophet who should teach the 
 
26 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 will of God for our salvation by less than a perfect, infallible, divine 
 word or lesson book : and the adoring Church of God continues to 
 adore in reverential silence, of one mind with her God in feeling that 
 every mouth is stopped by His demand, " What more could I have 
 done for my vineyard that I have not done ? " because it is not open to 
 reply that it still remains He should commit His revelation to writing. 
 I do not know that the fear of God could have suggested it. But I 
 rejoice to know that there is no ground in this direction to dread the 
 imperilment of the doxology, " Unto him that is able to do exceeding 
 abundantly above all that we ask or think." He hath anticipated the 
 suggestion : and from first to last the Scriptures are the Word of God 
 written, even as the pristine revelations were the revelations of God 
 spoken. 
 
 4. Let the various characteristics and qualities attributed to the 
 Scriptures be gathered together into a focus and steadily contem- 
 plated : and let any reasonable being say whether the impression 
 which such an exercise produces be less than that the Scriptures are 
 perfect, infallible, divine, — the writings of God Himself. It is quite 
 impossible that I can here conduct or exemplify this process : a very 
 few of the more striking attributions are all that I can present. Is not 
 the Scripture absolutely identified with the omniscient God as its 
 author, when prescience is predicated of it in the remarkable state- 
 ment ; " The Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen 
 through faith, preached before the Gospel unto Abraham, saying. In 
 thee shall all nations be blessed " (Gal. iii. 8) ? Again, is not a quality 
 alleged of it such as could come only from divine authorship, when 
 the Son of God Himself, in a quiet parenthesis such as implies that 
 what He is to allege is on all hands understood and admitted — declares 
 that " the Scripture cannot be broken " (John x. 35) ? And when 
 such an one as Peter the aged in his inimitably beautiful reminiscence 
 of the transfiguration speaking of the voice from the excellent glory, 
 hesitates not to speak of Holy Scripture as " a more sure word of 
 prophecy," — more sure, not intrinsically, for that is inconceivable, but 
 in respect of being both more permanent and susceptible of more 
 abundant verification — is there a single form of speech remaining into 
 which human language could be compelled in order to affirm the 
 divine authorship of the Word of God? 
 
 5. There is a fine argument — or rather vein of argument — for the 
 divine authorship of Scripture in, what I may call, the whole relation 
 to Scripture in wliich the Lord Jesus presents Himself. I cannot 
 work that vein here and now : I can merely indicate its existence, — 
 and in some such way as this. Can you imagine the second person 
 of the Godhead, Him who cometh from above and is above all, who 
 spake what He had heard and seen with the Father before the worlds 
 were, making such use of any writings that were not His Father's 
 as He made of the Old Testament Scriptures ? Hear Him quote them, 
 as of final authority : hear Him read them, and reverentially close the 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 27 
 
 book as one fully satisfied with them : hear Him speak of the fulfilling 
 of them as that in which His soul reposed with supreme and serenest 
 peace : — " This day is this Scripture fultilled in your ears " (Luke iv. 
 21). What words soever He, the Eternal Word made flesh, was 
 uttering of new were divine : what words of written Scripture (forgive 
 the pleonasm) He chose to interblend with His own divine speech — 
 were they less divine ? Does it ever enter into the imagination of the 
 thoughts of any reader of the Gospels, that when Christ Jesus quotes 
 the law or the psalms or the prophets, the quoted matter is less divine 
 than the divine direct speech which at the moment the mouth of the 
 Lord is uttering 1 Are not His divine thoughts finding expression as 
 divine in the written words which He adduces to express them, as in 
 the fresh and new divine words that are issuing from His gracious 
 lips 1 Who does not shrink from even thinking it necessary to deny 
 that there is here anything at all resembling the " putting of a piece 
 of new cloth on an old garment?" All is of a piece. All is equally 
 divine. The same rhythm and undertone of infallible ^Tlit'T, au^nv. 
 ity, and power pervade the quoted words and the divine infallible 
 comment and exposition for which they are adduced. And when, 
 abstaining from argument, exposition, comment. He makes quotation 
 pure and simple, who can fail to be most profoundly impressed with 
 the voice of the Son of God repeating as of unappellable authority the 
 written Scripture which cannot be broken ? Thus when the planetary 
 limitations of this little world give way before His view, and the 
 spiritual world unveils its awful kingdom of darkness before Him, 
 with its advancing prince daring him to combat, and if ever the words 
 of the Eternal God were needed they are needed now, three times 
 the words of Moses in Deuteronomy are quoted as the words of God : 
 — " It is written : " " It is written : " " It is written." 
 
 Yes, " It is written : " It is the Scripture. And that's enough. For 
 the Scripture cannot be broken. " And the devil leaveth him." 
 
 Is it possible that the whole question of the Lord God Emmanuel's 
 relation to His own Scriptures is going to be raised among us ? I am 
 not sure but that something has been said that may require to be 
 unsaid unless that question is to be raised. I confess, also, that I have 
 heard a strange whisper, with the leading word " nescience " in it ! 
 But I scarcely expect to hear it again. It is true that the God-Man, 
 Emmanuel, God with us, came not to teach science or criticism : yet 
 even concerning science and criticism I know not on what ground any 
 of His creatures shall dare to allege " nescience," — or indeed concern- 
 ing anything past, present, future, possible, or conceivable, excepting 
 alone that one only instance in which He Himself has affirmed 
 nescience (Mark xiii. 32). Who shall dare to allege another ? But 
 though He came not to execute the office of a critic, He came to 
 execute the office of a prophet, and that by revealing to us by His 
 Word and Spirit the will of God for our salvation. And to allege 
 concerning Him the least shadow of nescience there, I would fain 
 
28 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 trust His entire Church on earth will resent as blasphemy, with 
 instant, intuitive, and unanimous abhorrence. 
 
 6. And now, finally, the most direct, clear, and abundant evidence 
 of the divine authorship of Holy Scripture is found in the terms in 
 which the later Scripture writers quote from the earlier ones. 
 
 It may be safely said, I think, that the Church, during the pre- 
 sent century at least, has trusted too much, in the discussion of this 
 question, to the word " inspiration." It is not a word of one invari- 
 able meaning. It is not even a scriptural word, in this application : 
 and the Greek term, theopneustic, may raise questions as to its real im- 
 port. It is therefore far from wise to lay so much duty on one poor 
 vocable. Its powers, in fact, have been strained beyond endurance, 
 till it has been fain to go a-beggiug for help — somewhat pitiably and 
 not with much success — to our old friends " Verbal " and " Plenary," 
 as we have seen. And this has opened the door to a good deal of 
 unprofitable jangling about the modus, or process, of inspiration ; a 
 subject of which, from the nature of the case, we can know nothing 
 except what God may have been pleased to reveal, — and who that has 
 professed to teach conceruing it, has professed to teach what God has 
 revealed concerning it ? All this is the more to be regretted because 
 it is hard to see any reasonable inducement or feasible temptation to 
 risk so much on the doubtful fortunes of the word " inspiration." If 
 a single word, or brief phrase, shall be required to do so much duty, 
 then an infinitely safer investment is made in the expression — " divine 
 authorship." That is the nearest brief equivalent to the beautiful 
 proposition of our Confession : — " It pleased the Lord to commit the 
 same wholly to writing." And that is the state of the question, — 
 divine authorship, yea or nay ? — under which (the average Christian 
 intelligence sitting in judgment and craving satisfaction) it may most 
 satisfactorily go to proof. 
 
 Viewing the matter, then, in this plain light, look at such a chap- 
 ter, for instance, as the first of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It sparkles 
 with a galaxy of quotation from the Psalms. The quotations are as 
 follows : — Psalms ii. 7, Ixxxix. 26, xcvii. 7, civ. 4, xlv. 6, 7, cii. 25, 
 ex. 1. Kow of these seven, three are remarkably distinguished from 
 the other four ; I mean the first two and the last. They are in these 
 words : — (1.) " Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." (2.) 
 " I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son." (3.) " Sit 
 thou at my right hand till I make thy foes thy footstool." And the 
 remarkable thing about these quotations is that on turning to the 
 Psalms from which they are quoted severally, we find that in all these 
 cases, God is the direct speaker, the interlocutor, the dramatis persona 
 for the time being. No wonder, therefore, though quotation in each 
 of these cases is introduced with the words, " He said," or " Said He," 
 or " He saith." That is intelligible, if the book quoted from be recog- 
 nised as simply a genuine and authentic production — genuine as 
 opposed to forgery, and authentic as opposed to fable. It need not 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCllIPTURE, 29 
 
 be a book of divine authorship. If it has simply recorded veraciously 
 that Qrod said these things, they may reliably be quoted from it as 
 having been said by Him. 
 
 But the remarkable thing is that the other four quotations are 
 e([ually attributed to God. They also are introduced with a " Saith 
 He," or " He said." Yet when we turn to the Psalms from which 
 these quotations are made, we find not the least reason to imagine 
 that God is the speaker, or interlocutor, or dramatis persona, now. 
 Yet it is not only " He said, Thou art my Son," " and again, {he said), 
 I will be to him a Father" (ver. 5), and, "He said, Sit thou at my 
 right hand" (ver. 13): — but, "^e said, Let all the angels of God 
 worship him " (ver. 6) ; and, " He saith, Who maketh his angels 
 spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire " (ver. 7) ; and, " Unto the 
 Son he saith, Thy Throne, God, is for ever and ever " (ver. 8) ; 
 " And (he saith), Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the founda- 
 tions of the earth " (ver. 10). In short, these utterances — the last four 
 utterances — with which, save for the doctrine now concerned, God had 
 nothing more to do than with the propositions of Newton's Principia 
 — are attributed to God exactly as in the case of utterances that came 
 directly from His sacred mouth as the direct speaker at the time. 
 Now this is unintelligible, inexplicable, except on one only supposi- 
 tion, namely, that God is the author, the writer, of these Psalms, 
 whether He is at any time the speaker or interlocutor in them or not. 
 If you turn to the 45th Psalm, you find it is no dramatis persona, no 
 speaker, introduced for the time being, but just the author of the Psalm, 
 who says, " Thy Throne, God, is for ever and ever ; a sceptre of 
 righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom" (ver. 6). In the 97th 
 Psalm, it is not the Lord, as interlocutor for the time, that says, 
 " Worship him, all ye gods," or " Let all the angels of God worship 
 him " (ver, 7). And in the 104tli Psalm, it is not the Lord but the 
 Psalmist who says, "Who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers 
 a flame of fire " (ver. 4). And the same thing is true in the 102nd 
 Psalm : the invocation to the Messiah, " Thou, Lord, in the beginning 
 hast laid the foundations of the earth " (ver. 25), is the language of the 
 author or writer of the Psalm, and not of any speaker whom He intro- 
 duces as interlocutor. Yet all these statements are attributed to God 
 as being the author of them as truly as when " He saith unto the Son, 
 Sit on my right hand." 
 
 Now look, in any one case, say Ps. civ. 4, what this implies. If it 
 is God that saith, " Who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers 
 a flame of fire," then, as there is nothing peculiar in this verse, segre- 
 gating and secluding it to the honours of divine authorship, aside from 
 the rest of the Psalm, it follows that the whole Psalm is of divine 
 authorship. Farther, as there is nothing peculiar in this Psalm, segre- 
 gating and secluding it to the honours of divine authorship more than 
 any other Psalm, it follows that the whole Psalter is of divine author- 
 ship. And still farther, as there is nothing peculiar in the Psalter, 
 
30 THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF 
 
 segregating and secluding it to the honours of divine authorship, aside 
 from that Scripture to which it is indebted for being thus quoted and 
 honoured, it follows that the whole Scripture is of divine authorship, 
 insomuch that whatsoever is quoted from it may be heralded by the 
 phrase, " Saith the Lord," just as warrantably as when " The Lord 
 said to my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand till I make thy foes thy 
 footstool." 
 
 This may seem to be a very large amount of conclusion to draw 
 from its being written in Heb. i. 7, " Of the angels he saith, Who 
 maketh his angels spirits." But who will shew me how the conclu- 
 sion can be barred, or where it can be checked or abbreviated ? I 
 believe that one such quotation is enough to prove the divine author- 
 ship of the Scriptures ; and here you have them lying thick, the sheen 
 of them like stars on the sea. And this is not the only constellation, 
 the sort of Pleiades or seven stars, in the heaven of Scripture, where 
 exactly the same pregnant style of quotation is to be found. " Again 
 God limiteth a certain day, saying in David (in the 95th Psalm), 
 To-day, after so long a time " {Heb. iv. 7). God is not interlocutor or 
 speaker in that Psalm : and unless He be the writer and supreme 
 author of it, such quotation is inexplicable. Again " The Holy Ghost 
 saith (in that same 9.5th Psalm), To-day, if ye will hear his voice, 
 harden not your hearts " (Heb. iii. 7). And what conclusion is in- 
 evitable from the following striking allegation, " God spake in a 
 certain place (namely in Gen. ii. 2) of the seventh day on this wise, 
 And God did rest the seventh day from all his works " (Heb. iv. 4) ? 
 When we turn to the second chapter of Genesis, we find that this is 
 no direct utterance from the divine lips, as when He said, " Let there 
 be light ; " and if He be not the writer and author of the chapter, as 
 truly as He was the speaker of the word, " Let there be light," the 
 words are most unwarrantably put into His sacred mouth. And this 
 is not the only part of the second chapter of Genesis attributed to the 
 Lord, over and above direct speech of His. " Two, saith he, shall be 
 one fiesh " (1 Cor, vi. 16). Yet He saith not this, unless He be ac- 
 counted the writer of these words, as truly as He was the speaker of 
 the words, " It is not good that the man should be alone." The same 
 rule is evidently proceeded upon — I mean the law of the indifference 
 or equivalence of God's scriptured words with His spoken words — 
 when it is said, " Wherefore, he saith (in Psalm Ixviii. 18), When he 
 ascended on high he led captivity captive " (Eph. iv. 8). Again, as 
 in Acts xiii. 35, " He [namely, the same who had said, ' I will give 
 you the sure mercies of David ' (verse 34), and (verse 35), ' Thou art 
 my Son ' ] saith also in another Psalm (the 16th), Thou shalt not suffer 
 thine holy one to see corruption," And not to adduce farther evi- 
 dence : as truly as these words in the second Psalm belong to God, 
 as the direct speaker of them, " Thou art my Son ; " so truly do those 
 with which the Psalm opens ; for " Thou, God, by the mouth of 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 31 
 
 thy servant David hast said, Wliy do the heathen rage and the people 
 imagine a vain thing? " (Acts iv. 2o). 
 
 Or if one more proof in this kind shall be adduced, let it be from 
 the same equivalence when indicated by our Lord in His conflict with 
 the enemy in the wilderness. Twice out of the three instances in 
 which Jesus says, " It is written," He might be held to be attributing 
 what He quotes to God as at first hand the speaker. This is not in- 
 evitable ; though the categorical imperative in the great sayings, 
 " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God " (Deut. vi. 16), and " Thou 
 shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve " 
 (Deut. vi. 13), would no doubt justify their being regarded as of truly 
 divine authorship, and thei-efore of divine or final authority. But 
 that other saying, " Man shall not live by bread only, but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God " (Deut. viii. 6), that 
 has no right to be drawn upon as unappellable, and as equally divine 
 with the others, unless the simple fact that " it is written " be equiva- 
 lent unto "God hath said it." But these sayings are all alike wielded by 
 the blessed combatant with equal confidence as the sword of the Lord, 
 of heavenly temper, of divine workmanship. " It is scriptured " is 
 enough for Him. Is it not all alike His Father's word, of His Father's 
 authorship throughout, as of His Father's direct utterance oftentimes ; 
 always His Father's Scripture, which cannot be broken ? 
 
 Of course a treatise might be written : but, as I said, I shall decline 
 the ambition of prolonging an argument that may surely by this time 
 be warrantably considered as closed? 
 
 And now, in laying down my pen, I may be permitted to say that 
 since writing the Prefatory Note (which, unlike prefaces generally, 
 was really written first), my sense of dissatisfaction with the College 
 Committee's Eeport, as it bears on this great and vital question, has 
 increased, and I am growingly persuaded that I might have spoken 
 more strongly and still been within my warrant. Our godly fore- 
 fathers used to speak more plainly about " the enemy " than we do, 
 and trace his hand in their troubles more frequently. I am not sure 
 but that it would assist our charity and brotherly kindness were we to 
 follow their example, and recognise more distinctly the presence of 
 the adversary who has such a hand in making us adversaries among 
 ourselves. And as I had occasion recently to say that I could not 
 conceive of Satan doing a more cr^cel thing just now, on the platform 
 of Scotland and within the pale of the Free Church, than to put fire 
 between the young ministers and the old : so I may be allowed to add 
 that I can hardly conceive of him doing a cleverer thing than to induce 
 either old or young to enter into battle in a day like this armed with 
 the wretched decimal fraction of a splinter, " these revelations are 
 committed unto writing," instead of the glorious gigantic battle-axe, "It 
 pleased the Lord to commit them to writing." We were assured by 
 Dr Eainy at the recent meeting of Commission of Assembly, that were 
 
32 WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 the question of the iuspu^ation of Scriptvire to be raised in our Church 
 it would be easily settled. I am delighted to hear it. It will not, 
 certainly, be for anything that he has done to secure so desirable 
 an issue ! And I think I can assure him that when the discussion 
 comes, it shall take place on the grand and simple Westminster 
 Confession state of the question, and not on the emasculated repre- 
 sentation of it which the College Committee have chosen so ridicu- 
 lously to call " not only the technical ground of the Confession which 
 must regulate ecclesiastical procedure, but really the essential and 
 fundamental truth which it is vital to maintain " ! ! ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 TUUXBDLL AKD SPEAKS, PRISTEBS, EDINUORGII. 
 
Date Due 
 
Syracuse. N 
 Stockton, Co 
 
 
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